What The Wikileaks CIA Revelations Mean In A Big Data, IoT And AI Enabled World

For me, the most shocking revelations to come out of Wikileaks’ release of classified CIA documents relating to the agency’s spying activities has been how the alleged vector of attack has changed to targeting consumer electronic devices.

Whether it is iPhones, Android devices or Samsung Smart TVs, the spy agency has clearly seen the opportunities provided by the often paper-thin security of many of today’s IoT-connected, smart gadgets.

Whereas in the Cold War era, agents would, we are told, sneak into hotel rooms and offices undercover, in order to plant bugs and monitoring devices, today there is no need. The connected world offers them ready-built conduits into our homes and vehicles. And judging by the arsenal of hacking tools the CIA has been revealed to have at its disposal, manufacturers’ attempts to secure our privacy have been at best incompetent, and at worst, collaborative.

Of course, the documents, so far, do not go into a great deal of depth about how widely these intrusive technologies have been deployed. In other words, we know what they can do, but very little about what they have actually done.

The best case scenario is that these tools all represent technology that has been deployed legally – that is, used when security services have, through the correct channels, established there is a situation which requires them to take action to protect the public.

But the potential implications go far wider. These tools haven’t all been developed by the CIA themselves – in fact, a substantial portion of the leaked information relates to a catalog of software and utilities that have been “collected.” No one knows who they have been collected from. But what it does show is that the CIA has been aware for some time that the devices we are increasingly filling our homes with are not safe. And rather than act to help manufacturers and software developers shore up those vulnerabilities, they researched how they could best be exploited.

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It’s scary, because there is certainly a lack of understanding about how thoroughly sensors, scanners and cameras cover our lives, and just how powerful, in theory (and it seems practice) their potential for surveillance is.